Is this for real ?? Am I missing something?

[flatfinger]

I recently tried to browse over to this site www.tapeop.com

 

 

After a second of the front page , it switches to a page with this only..

 

 

 

We see that you are using Internet Explorer 8. TapeOp.com is a compliant website and we strongly recommend you download a free version of Firefox or Opera and discontinue using IE.

 

 

 

 

 

That's it . I can't browse . I cant subscribe to the mag . I'm done .

 

I guess I'm not tech savy for just using the Horrible MS Windoze default I.E. , and I need to get with it and use something else , but Jeeze !! This is the very first time I've ever had a site just tell me to go away ... Let alone and go away and install software were telling you too (like a good little boy) and then we'll let you come play and , maybe , let you give us your money !!!!!

 

 

 

WTF ,

 

 

Am I missing something here ?????

[Anderton]

They're doing you a favor. Most people I know who are savvy about browsers consider using IE like driving a Yugo, and also, that it's much less secure that Firefox or Opera.

 

However, I'd recommend FireFox over Opera because not all sites are compatible with Opera - althought it's slick and fast.

[flatfinger]

 

They're doing you a favor. Most people I know who are savvy about browsers consider using IE like driving a Yugo, and also, that it's much less secure that Firefox or Opera. However, I'd recommend FireFox over Opera because not all sites are compatible with Opera - althought it's slick and fast.

 

 

 

I'm just not having any problems here ... It ain't broke but I need to fix it then ???

 

I don't like installing software unless I have too ...........

 

 

More security ... That It ???

 

What If the old HUGO has been an adequare servant !!

 

Still gotta send it to the crusher then ???

 

 

( I'll have something to put on you tube at least!)

[philbo]

Yes you are missing something - - a 'real' browser.

 

Kudos to tapeop for what they're doing. If more sites did it maybe Microsoft could be nudged toward fixing the unending list of security holes they built into IE.

 

I appreciate that you resent being coerced this way, but consider it like somebody grabbing your beltloop to keep you from falling into a cesspool.

[rasputin1963]

I recently had a website tell me I needed to upgrade to IE9. But I WAS using IE9. Hmm.

[boosh]

I just noticed it yesterday.

I have IE8 and am not even thinking of using anything else.

Tapeop compliant?? My Behind. They're the opposite. How the hell are you compliant if millions of people can't browse your site.

[Ernest Buckley]

You are the problem.... still using IE. A glutton for punishment.

[boosh]

That's the stupidest bull{censored} I've ever heard. Who the {censored} are tapeop or you to tell me what browser to use.

 

Would be the same if your government tells you you can't ride the highway because you drive a Ford instead of a Toyota.

[Ed A.]

Even Aunt Fritzi hates it:

 

[Richard King]

I recently tried to browse over to this site www.tapeop.com After a second of the front page , it switches to a page with this only.. That's it . I can't browse . I cant subscribe to the mag . I'm done . I guess I'm not tech savy for just using the Horrible MS Windoze default I.E. , and I need to get with it and use something else , but Jeeze !! This is the very first time I've ever had a site just tell me to go away ... Let alone and go away and install software were telling you too (like a good little boy) and then we'll let you come play and , maybe , let you give us your money !!!!! WTF , Am I missing something here ?????

 

The same happened to me a couple of days ago. The site pops up and then is blocked by the spam screen for other browsers. I don't really like to have this kind of thing forced on me, so I guess I simply won't go there again. I can't believe a site would create this kind of policy. I thought most sites WANTED visitors to come rather than be chased away. It would be interesting to see the site statistics since they started this crap.

[the stranger]

Tape-Op is trying to do you a favor. I think the coercion thing is a bit much, maybe just a notice upon entry with a detailed reason why they suggest you switch browsers would be better.

 

Why would you want to line MS pockets anymore, anyway? That's what you're doing when you're doing when you use IE. And you're also helping them maintain unfair dominance in the market (which they achieved using anti-competitive practices). I think it's pretty obvious that I could list a whole bunch of reason why you shouldn't use IE.

 

Perhaps a better approach would be to offer exclusive content to those who don't use IE, rather than blocking those who do. Give them some incentive to switch, rather than trying to force them, which is not good PR. Especially considering the number of people who still use IE.

 

This actually could come back and bite Tape-Op in the ass if too many of their readers use IE.

[the stranger]

I contacted Tape-Op just now and sent them a link to this thread. Why just bitch on a forum when you can take direct action?

[Alndln2]

I only use FireFox for the streaming video download plugin or if I absolutely have to. It's just too damm slow and unorganized for me. Like driving a truck. IE8 is still faster for me(than Chrome or Opera).

[WRGKMC]

I've used explorer since 95 as well as a bunch of others along the way. I have zero problems with it and suffer no security problems or slowdowns. I couldnt run another browser at work on the company computer loading unauthorized programs anyway. I've run both Firefox and opera at home and see nothing great about them. Back in the Dial up days there may have been a benifit but with a high speed connection, it makes sero difference in speed. If anything the alternate browsers pretty much suck for menus.

 

My guess is the site is having issues building their site or maintaining it to be IE complient, or dont want to upgrade their site building tools or some other crap like that. Maybe MS requires some authorisation code or some nonsence. I'm not into web building so I cant be sure but dollars for donuts its the web site develooper who made a case not to make the site IE complient.

 

If a site wants to block a major browser thats ther perogative. I just wont recomend others to the site which is easy enough. I didn't think their site was thet great anyway, surely not enough to subscribe to so its no big loss to anyone other than some loyal fans not being able to get to it anyway.

[Coaster]

i think my PC has IE6. i really dont know because i have never launched it except once; to get firefox.

[ggm1960]

 

I couldnt run another browser at work on the company computer loading unauthorized programs anyway.

 

 

 

I've been using FF on my Macs and PCs at home for several years now and really like it, however, I wouldn't be able to access Tape Op from work either if IE is not allowed.

[WRGKMC]

I've been using FF on my Macs and PCs at home for several years now and really like it, however, I wouldn't be able to access Tape Op from work either if IE is not allowed.

I think you meant to say if IE is the only browswer allowed.

[boosh]

1/ I never had any problems with IE browsing sites or security.

2/ It came with my Win/XP

3/ Why the hell should I use another browser when this does the work it needs too.

4/ I had to pay MS anyways because their XP is the only one that does its job without screens of death or audiodriver issues on my set-up.

5 I am totally happy using what I have so .... anyone who tries to force other stuff on me ,....talk to the hand ;-)

 

 

No Macs,No Firefox no nothing.

 

No Tape-Op,.... Okay,...cool,...

[the stranger]

1/ I never had any problems with IE browsing sites or security. 2/ It came with my Win/XP 3/ Why the hell should I use another browser when this does the work it needs too. 4/ I had to pay MS anyways because their XP is the only one that does its job without screens of death or audiodriver issues on my set-up. 5 I am totally happy using what I have so .... anyone who tries to force other stuff on me ,....talk to the hand ;-)

 

1. You are one of the few. Google brings back over 200 million results for "IE security". Major corporations have switched their systems from using IE due to the rampant security flaws that are seemingly never ending. Just because you haven't had problems doesn't mean they aren't there. And I'm guessing you do have problems, you just don't know it. Windows and IE are too integrated and when you combine the security issues of both, you're asking for trouble. The DOD even recommends using LINUX as a secure system.

2. Reason number one not to use it. If you use it, you are supporting IE's unfair dominance in the browser market. They didn't earn it by having a better browser. They achieved dominance through anti-competitive practices. Microsoft OS still have 90% of the market, yet Firefox has 30% of the browser market. That means plenty of people are choosing to not use IE, even though it's on their system. And the reasons for such are extensive.

3. Because it's a pos.

4. Switching browsers doesn't mean you have to give up XP.

5. I'm only asking people to switch based on principle. Just like you wouldn't want to support a company that engages in shady business practices, why would you want to support IE?

 

[blue2blue]

A lot of you guys kind of are on the wrong page with regard to why IE8 probably doesn't work at TapeOp. Here's what I wrote in the same thread that Flatfinger posted at GS (bold added for the impatient):

 

 

I hate IE at this point -- but, actually, as verified by independent audit, IE8 was the most web standard complaint browser when it came out (and may still be).

 

But the problem for a lot of developers is that the previous versions of IE -- particularly up through 6 -- were very nonstandard and because of IE's huge browser share (which has diminished but continues to be significantly larger than others), developers wrote a bunch of kludges and 'browser hacks' to get around all the idiotic things that IE did.

 

The problem is that when a standard compliant IE came out, it broke many of those kludges -- particularly those where the developer had specificed page handling that used a "later than" logic in the kludges instead of tying the kludges to specific browser versions.

 

(IOW, when developers like me wrote special handling code for IE 7, instead of specifying just 7, some of us specified later than 7 [along with the stack of other hacks for earlier versions, depending on how far back one wanted to support].)

 

So, when 8 came out -- and its standards compliance (while not perfect) was actually tighter than other browsers at the time (they all have nonstandard aspects, pretty much), many of those hacks for older IE's brought pages acropper because the web page often thought it was dealing with a typical non-standard IE.

 

 

Trust me, I was beside myself, when I dutifully installed IE8 and found it breaking many of my pages. But some quick googling (clients are so weird when they think their web page has suddenly self-destructed and trust me -- they blame you even if you haven't touched the damn thing in months ) and I found the likely places to look, went through the code bases for all my client sites and fixed them.

 

It was a pain, no question. But it was a pain because of the hacks for the older versions that I'd built into my pages trying to trick IE6 and IE7 (I gave up on 5 some years back -- it's over ten years old, for gosh sake!).

 

 

FWIW, I have IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari (and often but not now, Opera) installed on my machine and I use them all for testing and they all have quirks and I find that each of them seem to have sites they break (for various reasons).

 

I see Chrome recommended a lot -- and there are some nice things about it -- it's certainly the fastest loading and rendering browser I've used. (It uses a version of the Webkit rendering engine, like Safari, but Safari is still fairly slow and Chrome is the opposite.) It's generally pretty CSS standards compliant. But a lot of websites get broken under Chrome (and my version is stock, no extensions). It can't handle most of the WYSIWYG online editors around (it finally works with the Wordpress editor at least!).

 

And, while it's fast, it's a big ass RAM hog! I can open 10 tabs in FireFox and end up with about 250 MB of RAM sucked down. But if I open the same 10 tabs in Chrome, it's going to be using maybe 650 MB of RAM, sometimes more. Each additional window or tab will take around 60 MB. Whereas it looks like the per-tab overhead in FF is more like 15 MB after an initial 50 or so.

 

 

So, you know, basically, I hate 'em all.

 

____________

 

 

But that wasn't enough...

 

 

it does seem sort of suicide-bomber to put up a web page that is invisible to roughly 50% of the potential viewers maybe Microsoft poisoned their dog or something

[EDIT: IE actually has about 57% webshare]

 

Yeah... particularly since it's likely that it's actually nonstandard hacks in their site code that break the site, so, unless I'm missing something, their complaint is actually kind of upside down.

 

Mind you, I'm not letting MS off for their past bad behavior, I'm just saying that the problem is probably that previous bad behavior that likely caused nonstandard hacks to be built into the TapeOp site or board software and that those nonstandard hacks, littered like landmines through a lot of folks old code, that are likely the problem here, as browser recognition code identifies IE8 as IE and "misapplies" unnecessary hacks.

 

One way or another, the initial blame starts out with MS.

 

But maybe it's kind of short sighted to cut of IE now that it actually is as standard compliant as its ever been and was the most compliant browser by independent testing when it was released. I suspect it was a kind of straw-that-broke-the-camels-back thing. Dealing with older versions of IE was nightmarish but the path forward should be relatively straightforward. (That said, there are still some discrepancies; part of that is the way the standards are written, which has often been vague. I'm not a huge fan of the W3C, to be frank.)

 

 

Now, all that is why guys like me go nuts when the companies on the W3C start playing politics and trying to get proprietary technology (like H.264 proprietary video codecs, partially owned by MS and Apple, among others) established as part of the 'standard' for HTML5... (Google is the clear good guy, from the open software point of view, there, since they bought the VP8 video codec technology and gave it to the open source community. Otherwise, Apple and MS would have been able to freeze Firefox, Opera, and niche browsers out of the HTML5 video standard, since those companies don't have the money to commit to the proprietary H.264 codec.)

[Hard Truth]

 

I just noticed it yesterday. I have IE8 and am not even thinking of using anything else. Tapeop compliant?? My Behind. They're the opposite. How the hell are you compliant if millions of people can't browse your site.

 

 

This.

 

Most sites manage to be compatible with all current browsers. They are not doing us any favors.

[the stranger]

This. Most sites manage to be compatible with all current browsers. They are not doing us any favors.

 

I actually think this is the last word, no matter what my previous post stated. It's just good design practice to ensure compatibility across browsers, and to make sure a page degrades in an acceptable fashion in the case that a page isn't completely cross-browser friendly.

 

[blue, thanks for your extended post...I was waiting patiently to hear your take on this...as most of my real reasons for not using IE are the usual politics...but I have dealt with a number of the issues you mention...nothing is more frustrating than designing a killer web page in 10 minutes and then spending two hours to make it work in IE. I will say that IE8 has so far not given me any real trouble rendering what worked fine in FF and Chrome. I've actually made more adjustments for Firefox lately, but that's probably because I'm coding in Chrome.]

[blue2blue]

Yeah the real 'problem' with IE8 is all the earlier IE's that caused guys like me to load their code with browser hacks trying to get those earlier versions to look right.

 

So if you're not coding for IE6 (or IE7, which is better but has some definite quirks) and/or don't have to deal with old code that does contain such hacks, things should look about the same in IE8 (and presumably 9) as they do in Chrome and Safari and mostly the same as FF, which has more noncompliances than the others but is moving in the right direction.

 

FWIW, I use FF for all my BB posting, since Google refuses to update Chrome to work with most online WYSIWYG rich text editors like those used here and at Gearslutz, and because FF is so very much more efficient with multiple windows or tabs than Chrome or Safari, which are RAM hogs.

 

But Chrome is my 'default' browser -- if I click on a desktop website link or in an email in my email client, I want to get the quick loading of Chrome. It's also my unscientific impression that Chrome handles video better than the others... but I haven't really tested that in any way. It's an impression.

 

 

The funny (not ha ha funny really) is that IE6 was actually a quite efficient, fast rendering browser when compared to other browsers of the mid 00's -- with caching turned off.

 

[With re caching: most "tech writers" who have written about how much faster various browsers were usually missed the fact that many of those browsers defaulted to very aggressive caching. (And, particularly with regard to early versions of FF, the caching was so aggressive that it often seemed to ignore changes [and still 'misses' them at times] -- which used to drive me nuts since I'd make a change, look at it in IE and it would be there, then look at it in FF, and the change wouldn't show up. I'd have to close down the entire browser and all its windows and then reopen it just to get a page to refresh. (There was an about:config setting you could use to try to force a fresh load on every refresh but even that didn't always work. FF is much better on that front now, seems like.) FF wasn't only one with super aggressive caching though, by a stretch. Chrome and Safari defaulted to aggressive caching -- and, IIRC, it was impossible or very difficult in early Safari (for Win, anyhow) to change those settings.]

 

IE6 was relatively fast and ran clean with little or no memory leakage (in my experience) but the same cannot be said of IE8, which is a dog, as far as I'm concerned. It may have been fixed but the version I originally installed very much appeared to leak significant memory (memory was not 'garbage collected' and released when the browser app closed).

 

 

 

 

It's safe to say that screwing with browser standards compliance issues (and IE is the worst, but the others have had their quirks) has taken its toll on me... (it's even forced me to keep IE6 on my laptop, since there are still a slug of people using that roughly 10 year old browser and because its rendering is so nonstandard... there's a real reason web designers learned to hate IE).

[the stranger]

I went and tried it and sure enough, you get a page with that message in the OP. I'll attach a screencap to the next post (it won't let me do it in the edit).

 

What's weird is the page had loaded and then it redirected the page to this link: http://www.tapeop.com/ieredirect/8/

 

What I'm wondering is if there is supposed to be a link to click to say "ok, yeah whatever" and then proceed back to the site. I didn't see one. And trying to reload forces the redirect again. So, I tried to go around the main page by using their FAQ link http://www.tapeop.com/faq/ and I got the same thing.

 

It literally is loading the page, then forcing the redirect. No wonder the OP is pissed. This is really bad design practice.

[Coaster]

wait a minute here........microsoft doing something bad? persons creating problems? these sound like........conspiracy theories. facts be damned.

 

perhaps the pot is as black as the kettle.